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What’s that smell?

We’d been living with the strangest odor in our house for almost two weeks. And I was pretty sure it was coming from the kitchen sink. Now let me give you a little back story here real quick so you can understand why I had come to that conclusion.

Our kitchen sink has clogged and backed up a few times in recent months and this last time was the worst of all. Long story short, my very handy husband saved us $500 by chiseling out the stucco on the OUTSIDE of our house to find the clean out valve for the kitchen sink. Seems like 20+ years ago, the builder of our house decided to stucco OVER the clean out valve. After getting some plumbing quotes and discovering that we had a more serious problem than just a standard clog, my hubs took the matter into his own hands and knocked out the stucco and found the clean out valve in the wall. He was able to use an auger and put it in the clean out valve (which we were told is the proper way to clean a clog) and he even installed a little door over the valve on the outside wall to make it look nice. Of course this all could’ve been avoided if the builder had done their job properly…..

Anyways, shortly after that incident, I noticed a horrid odor coming out of the sink area. Like sweet, rotten, nasty dirty dog smell. We figured it was rotten food remnants stuck in the pipes or the disposal so we tried a drain cleaner. Didn’t work. I even tried the trusty old school method of baking soda, vinegar and boiling water. In case you’re not familiar with this, it really does work great for small clogs and odors.

1/2 cup of baking soda is poured into the drain. Followed by about 1 cup of white vinegar. Let that sit awhile (maybe half an hour) then pour in a small pot of boiling water. If the clog’s not too bad, it should clear it right out as well as freshen things up odor wise.

So anyways, that method didn’t do anything either. I used those lemon plink balls. Nada! I finally resorted to using lots of air fresheners which really did nothing but add to the “sweet” rotten smell. I really didn’t know where to go from there.

Sunday morning rolls around and we’ve had a busy weekend and my husband is wanting a nice breakfast. So I get up early and start cooking so we can have a big breakfast before church. Bacon, eggs, biscuits & gravy. That was on the menu. So I’ve got the bacon and biscuits in the oven. Getting ready to start the gravy on the stovetop and needed to break my eggs into a bowl because I really wanted scrambled eggs. Well if you didn’t know this, we have chickens in our backyard so we always have fresh eggs. Unfortunately it’s been so hot here and my girls haven’t been laying that much. So I only had four eggs in my basket (which I keep on the counter) but I figured that was enough. I started rinsing them off and cracking them into the bowl and when I get to the last egg, it’s stuck to the basket. Weird. I grab it a little harder and it just explodes! But not like yolk and all that splatters me. Just a huge puff of air, like it had been compressed. This is followed by the most horrible odor I could have ever imagined. Then black liquid starts oozing out of the egg and onto the countertop.

I tried my best to clean it up but I started dry heaving uncontrollably. So loud in fact that my husband yells down the stairs and wants to know what is wrong with me! I tell him there’s black stuff coming out of the egg and it smells disgusting. He comes down and like my knight in shining armor, cleans it all up. The smell is so bad we have to open all the windows and turn the fan on. He also comes to the conclusion that the egg was cracked on the bottom and air had gotten in, causing the egg to slowly rot and reach a point somewhere past rancid.

After the clean up, my hubs asks me if I thought the egg was the smell and not actually the sink. Hmmm….. good idea! The smell is so bad though that I figure once it all clears out and we get home from church, we’ll be able to tell.

Fast forward a couple hours later and we walk into a stink free kitchen. So almost two weeks of enduring rotten kitchen stink funk, only for it to end up being a rotten egg sitting on the counter next to the sink.